Delays Grow for Travelers to Tomatoes as U.S. Cuts Hours

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official inspects trucks entering from Mexico at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in San Diego. Photographer: Sam Hodgson/Bloomberg

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Customs inspectors trimmed working
hours at the nation’s second-busiest container port and lines
more than doubled at some of the largest airports as U.S.
spending cuts began slowing transportation links.

The disruptions stemmed from a Homeland Security Department
decision to reduce overtime, an initial consequence of budget
cuts that took effect March 1 and may lead to furloughs next
month. The changes will mean fewer federal workers at airports,
harbors and land borders, making it harder for passengers and
produce to clear customs, officials said.

The Federal Aviation Administration today indicated that it
intends to issue furlough notices to “all its employees,” Doug
Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers
Association, a labor union, said in an e-mailed statement. In a
month there will be fewer controllers in towers, and increased
delays for travelers, Church said. FAA Administrator Michael
Huerta warned of furloughs in a letter to agency employees on
Feb. 11.

Importers of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash,
cucumbers and other fruits and vegetables are bracing for long
lines at border crossings, said Lance Jungmeyer, president of
the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. Shipments may
surge as weather and markets change, and companies rely on
customs agents being present when needed, he said.

‘Terrible Time’

“They need to have flexibility, and without overtime you
don’t have flexibility,” said Jungmeyer, whose Nogales,
Arizona-based trade group promotes Mexican produce in the U.S.
Plans for furloughs next month add to the industry’s concerns,
he said.

“April’s still a terrible time,” he said. “The peak
season for fresh fruits and vegetables from Mexico continues
through May.”l

The Department of Homeland Security is cutting overtime at
the Transportation Security Administration, the agency
responsible for screening airport travelers, and at Customs and
Border Protection, the unit charged with safeguarding borders,
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a meeting of the
International Air Transport Association in New York City today.

“Assuming sequestration continues, we will not be able to
pay TSA workers overtime,” Napolitano said. “With respect to
Customs, which has to clear people coming into the United
States, we will be required to furlough, one day out of every
14, all 21,000 CBP officers who staff our ports of entry in
addition to reductions of overtime and a hiring freeze.”

Peak Times

Napolitano said that peak wait times at major airports may
double to four hours, and advised airline executives to be
prepared to adjust schedules to anticipate longer lines at
security checkpoints.

“There may come a time when the wait times are such you
need to analyze connecting times,” Napolitano said. “We can
see a time where there will be a lot of missed connections. I’m
not trying to alarm you. I’m trying to educate you.”

Under the budget cuts known as sequestration, the U.S. is
trimming $85 billion from federal spending in the remaining
seven months of the current fiscal year. The across-the-board
cuts were designed to be so painful that they would replaced by
Congress and the administration of President Barack Obama before
their March 1 implementation.

The cuts may stay in place for weeks as both sides
negotiate over a fresh deadline of March 27, when the
government’s authority to spend money expires.

Long Beach

At the cargo port in Long Beach, California, the nation’s
second-busiest after the nearby Port of Los Angeles, customs
crews were starting an hour later than typical and quitting half
an hour earlier from March 1, according to Art Wong, a
spokesman. About $140 billion in goods move through Long Beach
each year, according to the port’s website, and the two
facilities together handle about a third of U.S container
imports.

“They were using overtime, and now they have less overtime
to spread around,” Wong said in an interview. “So they just
squeeze the hours.”

It wasn’t clear what effect U.S. staffing reductions may
have had on operations at the port of Los Angeles, Phillip
Sanfield, a spokesman for the facility, said in an interview.

The lack of overtime may curtail radiation and X-ray
examinations of containers, the San Dimas, California-based
Foreign Trade Association said in a Feb. 25 note to its members.
That means cargo that arrives late in the day will spend an
extra night in port, the group said.

‘Cuts Necessary’

Managers at the Long Beach and Los Angeles ports “made it
clear, certain types of cuts may be necessary,” Erik
Smithweiss, president of the trade association, said in an
interview.

Undocumented immigrants and cargo will likely flow across
the border with Mexico and into the U.S. as border patrol agents
take a pay cut amounting to 35 percent from furlough days and
missing overtime, J. David Cox Sr., national president of the
American Federation of Government Employees union, said in an e-mailed statement today.

“Agents will be instructed to stop working at the moment
their straight shift ends,” Cox said.

Customs and Border Protection is reducing rather than
eliminating overtime and the length of the automatic cuts isn’t
known, so “it is difficult to project the impact of the
reductions,” Jenny Burke, a Washington-based CBP spokeswoman,
said in an e-mail.

Illegal immigration, drug smuggling and border crime may
rise as spending cuts reduce hours for border patrol agents,
said Shawn Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol
Council, representing 17,000 non-supervisory agents. Officers
may have to take as many as 14 days of unpaid time off and see
their typical work hours cut to eight from 10 as overtime is
scaled back by Customs and Border Protection, Moran said.